De'Aaron Fox: How His Nickname Is Inspired By Dora The Explorer

Where is De'Aaron Fox going? To the NBA Draft! Where is De'Aaron Fox going? To the NBA Draft!

The former Kentucky Wildcats point guard is expected to be one of the top selections Thursday. He will join the most prestigious basketball league in the world as a 19-year-old.

And his nickname comes from ... Dora the Explorer.

Fans may notice Fox's Twitter and Instagram accounts are "@Swipathefox." The younger crowd may also be able to connect that to Swiper, the fox and chief antagonist on the Nick Jr. program.

"When I was younger, I just played a lot of defense, even like how I'm playing now," Fox says. "I used to get a lot of on-ball steals since about fourth or fifth grade, and my last name's Fox, and one of my friends' dad actually just started calling me 'Swipa.' You know, 'Swiper the Fox' from Dora. And it just kind of stuck. I liked it and everybody likes to tag, so I just ran with it. And 'Swiper' is probably trademarked, so I can't use that. So Swipa's good for me."

So just to confirm De'Aaron, your nickname is inspired by a Dora the Explorer character?

"Yeah, it is. But it's not spelled the same, so we can get away with that."

On a different note, Fox's collegiate jersey number, zero, has a more "adult" origin.

"Fear no one," Fox says. "You should never feel like you can't do anything. That's why it's like the sky's the limit. There's no limit to anything, so the limit is zero. That's just something I've been living by."

That's right. Fear no one. Not even a fox from a children's program. There's no way John Calipari knew about this while recruiting Fox, right?